For many hundreds of years, Brittany
has been on the international map for travellers. Long before the age
of tourism, this westward province of France, jutting boldly out into
the rolling Atlantic, was one of France's major gateways to the rest of
the world. Through the region's historic ports such as Lorient,
Saint Malo or Brest,
seafarers and travellers passed en route to and from the distant
corners of the earth. From Breton ports, explorers set out to discover
the New world and the Indies; and through these harbours and ports once
passed a good proportion of France's foreign trade; coffee and spices
from the Orient, furs and tobacco from the new World, and all the
products that France sent out to the rest of the world in the days of
galleons and clippers.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the arrival of steam trains
made Brittany relatively easily accessible from Paris; and being
somewhat closer than the South of France, and somewhat milder than the
area to the north of Paris, Brittany became a popular region,
developing seaside resorts much in the same way as Devon and Cornwall
did on the other side of the Channel.
More recently, with the development of
international travel, cross-Channel
ferry services, high-speed trains and motorways, Brittany has
become a region that is very accessible for holidaymakers
from neighbouring countries, as well as from the rest of France; and
Britttany is now the fourth most popular tourist region in
France, and the most popular in northern France. It is also the region
of France with the longest coastline - 2730 kilometres or over 1600
miles.
The
Breton connection
If the region seems to have particular appeal for
tourists and travellers from the UK, the reasons are not hard to
discover. In many ways, both culturally and historically, Brittany has
more in common with parts of the British Isles than it does with the
rest of France. The name itself is a clue to this; Brittany and Britain
come from the same root, and in French the connection is even more
obvious; the French call Brittany "la Bretagne", and call Britain "la
Grande Bretagne" - or "big Brittany", if we translate it litterally.
For thousands of years there have been comings and goings across the
western reaches of the English Channel, and many of the Britons who
holiday in this western province of France may actually be visiting an
area where some of their own distant ancestors came from.
Significantly, the centre of the western tip of Brittany
is called "Cornouailles", which is also the French for
Cornwall.
Today,
Brittany is
one of the administrative regions of France, and covers four French
departments, Finistère, Côtes du Nord, Morbihan and Ille et Vilaine.
This is not actually the whole of the historic province of Brittany, as
a fifth department, the area around the mouth of the Loire, known as
"Loire Atlantique", has been detached from the rest of the
region since 1941. Today, this department, whose capital Nantes was
once the capital of the whole of Brittany, is attached to the Loire
valley administrative region, much to the displeasure of many in
Brittany, notably the nationalists. In Brittany, as in the
Celtic parts of the British Isles, nationalism is a strong force.
The
Breton land
Geographically and topographically,
Brittany has a lot in common with the English westcountry, from Devon
to Cornwall; it is an undulating region of hills and valleys,
stone-built villages and small towns, with wild
moorland rather similar to Dartmoor or Bodmin Moor. The
highest point in Brittany is a granite tor called Roc'h Ruz,
387 metres (1270 ft) above sea level.
While the classic image of Brittany's coastline
is that of massive Atlantic breakers bursting over
defiant granite rocks, Brittany's coastline actually
offers a wide range of seashores, from small sandy or pebbly coves to
sand dunes and broad sandy beaches; it also offers a wealth of inlets
and harbours, making this region the most popular in France with
sailing enthusiasts. The south-facing coast of the Morbihan benefits
from a particularly mild climate.
Agriculture
Along with tourism, agriculture is one
of Brittany's other main economic activities; Brittany is one of
France's leading vegetable growing regions, with artichokes,
cauliflowers, carrots and potatoes among the most important crops; but
Brittany, with its mild climate, is also a region well suited to dairy
farming and poultry breeding, and butter and chickens are also major
regional exports. On the downside however, over-intensification of
agriculture in the Breton countryside has led to major problems of
pollution from surface water runoff, and many of the region's streams
and rivers suffer from high levels of nitrates and phosphates. On
occasions, excessive runoff of agrochemicals into the coastal waters
has led to serious but localised cases of algal bloom, with rocks and
the seabed getting covered with a mass of seaweed. The problem is now
recognised as a serious issue, and hopefully the introduction of new
more eco-friendly farming methods will mean that Brittany's
agro-pollution problems, which have often made headline news in France,
will be a thing of the past. |
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